


Fever of Light

by mytimehaspassed



Series: Fever of Light [1]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, F/F, Immortality, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Mild Sexual Content, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-16
Updated: 2020-07-16
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:07:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25310596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mytimehaspassed/pseuds/mytimehaspassed
Summary: Yusuf, he says, as he kills him.Again.
Relationships: Andy | Andromache the Scythian/Quynh | Noriko, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Series: Fever of Light [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1870885
Comments: 39
Kudos: 850





	Fever of Light

He tells him his name, breathless, his chapped lips in the crook of Nicolo’s dirty neck, tongue between his bloody teeth. Nicolo feels the dry, humid air that coasts achingly slow over his wounds, the sting and bite of it, the sting and bite of this man’s mouth murmuring words Nicolo doesn’t know into Nicolo’s skin, so close it’s almost obscene, here on the battlefield where the sun stains everything gold and red, red and gold, and the man is saying his name again, bitten out over the pain of Nicolo’s arming sword sliding smooth between two of his ribs, and Nicolo says nothing as he feels the punch of his own death, as the man smiles at him wolfishly, returning the favor. 

Yusuf, he says, as he kills him.

Again. 

***

There were more deaths after that, countless deaths, but mostly they just like to forget. 

***

Nicolo passes along the waterskin, and Yusuf drinks before he washes the blood from his face. They’re a continent away from the Holy Lands, a few decades away, and they dream about a pale, dark-haired woman every night. Her companion isn’t as clear, but Nicolo wakes once with a foreign name between his lips, and Yusuf nods beside him and closes his eyes in defeat. They barely sleep most nights, can’t sleep once the dreams overtake them, the nightmares that sit just below their consciousness, feeding them clues they’re not sure how to use. 

At a market in Cairo, Yusuf trades vellum and animal bones for silk-sewn books of paper, uses them to sketch the faces that he sees, the weapons and clothes and the men these women kill. Nicolo watches from over his shoulder, Yusuf’s hands and fingers on the qalam stained with ink, and hums when Yusuf is finished, her face staring up at them, alive. 

This is before they kiss for the first time, but after they’ve stopped trying to kill each other. 

They kill other men, instead, the rise and fall of militias and regimes like the pull of the ocean tide, and this is not where they thought their destiny led, but this is what they see in their dreams at night: the women riding into battle with their swords, bloody and golden. They pass through villages during the day, following the hints of a revolution wherever they can find it, and – of course – dying, and dying again. 

At dusk every night, leaning against the trunk of a marula tree, Yusuf teaches Nicolo Arabic using the Italian that he knew even before the battlefield, having been a merchant in another life before this one, many lives ago. Nicolo smiles wide when Yusuf tells him his pronunciation has improved, lets the small finger of his right hand ghost over Yusuf’s palm, a touch that sends a shiver up Yusuf’s spine. 

The plains make noise at night, animals and insects and the distant hunting parties, but whenever Yusuf watches the curl of Nicolo’s mouth, Yusuf can only hear the beating of his own heart, loud in the place beneath his jaw. Their swords lie between them when they sleep, and Yusuf lets the metal burn into his skin all night long, cutting him until he heals. 

***

When Andromache and Quynh finally find them, they’re already in love. 

***

A few centuries later, he’s stopped believing in a higher power. 

This is around the same time that he changes his name, telling Nicky to call him Joseph, Joe, licking it into his mouth in the back of the stable where they had left their horses for the night, Andy already inside the inn drowning herself in whatever gutrot they would be able to afford. Nicky grips Joe’s cheeks and murmurs something Joe can’t understand through the heat of his tongue, and Joe’s fingers creep inside Nicky’s tunic and there are curses bitten between them, and the horses stamp and kick and whinny around them, and the hay itches at them all night, even long after they go inside to sleep on the floor of one of the rooms, curled around each other, the rashes on their bare palms and feet and knees visible into the next morning, and Quynh doesn’t even bother to hide her wicked smile when she sees, when she realizes what it’s from, but neither of them are embarrassed, far from it – the corner of Joe’s mouth inching up his cheek every time he remembers the prickle of warmth, the way Nicky had moaned his new name like a fucking call to prayer, high and tight in his throat, deep where Joe had used his teeth and tasted blood – and, anyway, Quynh is also complicit, her fingers tucked inside Andy’s clothes all the same. 

It’s easy, to forget who and what and why they are, easy to see the changing of the decades and centuries and millennia and not remember what came before. 

There are always little things that help them forget, little hedonisms that follow them into the next country, into the next safe house or flat or entire village: the way that Nicky looks at him when the sun sets over the mountains, the half-smile and blunt teeth and the way his fingers rest soothingly on Joe’s sweat-stained wrist after a fight, the way he still kisses him – a rush of adrenaline, sucking in all of Joe’s air, eating away at his mouth like there’s no hope, like it’s the first and fifth and sixteenth time that they’re dying on the battlefield, and this is the last thing, the only thing, that he wants to do before it’s all over – the way Nicky says he loves him in every language they’ve ever learned, every language Joe has ever taught him, starting with Arabic, his voice soft and small in the junction where Joe’s neck meets his shoulder, sleep-warm, knowing that Joe will always say it back. 

When it’s them, when it will always be them together, forever, it’s easy to change their names, their beliefs, easy to see the next sunrise, the next New Years, to move on. 

It’s as easy as dying. 

***

They lose Quynh to the witch trials, to drowning forever in her iron coffin, Andy a shell of her former self. 

After the decades of searching and searching for Quynh, after sailing the Atlantic with false papers two or three times, always to inquire about one particular trial, one particular sea burial, Andy dressing as a sailor in loose-fitting wool and slops, and Joe and Nicky only finding peace in the small, furtive touches in the dark of the hull, the pained, biting kisses before they jump the plank and wash ashore for the first, second, final time, Joe finds a cottage somewhere away from London, abandoned by the dead. 

Nicky shreds his hands weeding the lilies and hollyhocks and ivy from the slats in the wooden floor, crouching for hours on his knees before Joe lights a fire in the hearth for tea, coaxing him to sit near the brass fire pot they found in the garden, wrapping a blanket around his shoulders. Joe busies himself with changing sheets and making food and filling the ancient wooden, steel-lined bathtub upstairs with the water from the fire, hauling the buckets up two at a time, sloshing them hard enough to burn himself and heal and then burn himself again. It had taken hours to pluck the leaves out, to wash away the soil and grime, and to close all of the open windows just as the sun began to go down behind the hills, bathing everything in red autumn light. He fills the tub again, clean this time, and calls Andy from where she sits in one of the bedrooms, watching an empty bird’s nest wither and blow away with the wind. 

Andy hasn’t said a word for days, for months, and she stays in the tub until her whole body prunes, until she has stopped breathing a few times, sliding under the rust-colored water and opening her mouth and letting the darkness wash over her, imagining what it must be like. She wakes and gasps and leans over the side to vomit, and Joe comes in after the third time of hearing her through the door and begs her to stop it, please, tears in his eyes. 

They eat quietly that night, and the next, and the one after that, Joe baking bread from the wheat he finds in the field beyond the garden, the dried herbs in the cupboard that have seen better days, the vegetables that have grown wild and desiccated and wild again, puts together enough ingredients for a stew that smells lovelier than it tastes. They trade bayberry candles for eggs and milk and veal from the farm down the road, ignoring the looks they receive: two men and one woman in ill-fitting clothes and blood beneath their fingernails, shedding the usual, traditional customs, learning how to live more than one life. 

They don’t mind, they never mind. 

Nicky cries at night, when he thinks Joe can’t hear him, palm over his eyes. He still prays, still believes, will do so into the next millennia, even when the popularity of religion ebbs and flows out of reach, even when his God never answers him. 

They live softly, faintly, for some time after that, rising in the morning to tend to the garden and fields, sometimes venturing to the village for more supplies, always in pairs, never alone. Joe crafts a fishing net from the willow tree, and they sit on the river in the mist and hope for perch, Nicky weaving a pine basket with his deft fingers, smiling at Joe over the yellow Star-of-Bethlehem, silt clinging to his skin in great swaths. Andy trains and trains and sharpens her axe against the stone foundation of the cottage, and it’s been long enough that her guilt should have stopped wearing her like a second skin, but still she barely eats, barely sleeps, haunted by the immortal. And when she speaks, her voice is sharp and hoarse, as if it hurts to use it, as if she doesn’t know how. 

Nicky touches her with careful, delicate hands. 

Joe forgets to touch her at all. 

In the cottage, there are birthdays and anniversaries and holidays, and it’s mostly happy and mostly sad, and Andy cuts off all of her hair with sheep shears one morning, spreading the locks over the garden beds for fertilizer, watching Nicky watch her do it. She smiles at him reticently and tells him in that broken voice of hers that she’s leaving her past self behind, and he nods and understands, and once inside presses a small kiss to the back of Joe’s neck and remembers what it’s like to love and be loved. 

Buried beneath the earth of the cellar floor, Nicky finds a violino in almost working condition, repairing the catgut and running a damp cloth around the neck and bridge, tuning it by ear. He barely had lessons when he was a child, but he can still remember a few songs, plucks them out sometimes, when Joe is in the kitchen with flour on his cheeks, perfect imprints of Nicky’s thumbs, when Andy is outside in the cold, curved over her horn and mulberry and sinew, whittling a bow.

And the music will follow them into the night, long after Nicky has put the instrument down, and Nicky will wipe away the dust from Joe’s cheeks and rest his chin on Joe’s shoulder, his mouth wet on Joe’s neck, humming something softly to the tune, and Andy will eventually come in again to sit by the fire, pouring something warm and potent into one of the clay cups from the kitchen, and Joe will trace the knots of Nicky’s spine with his fingers, and sway them gently until the aches in the pit of both of their stomachs dissipate with the sunlight. 

And late into the evening, after they have all gone to bed, Nicky will shift closer to Joe and whisper in a language both of them know, his mouth touching the ridge of Joe’s brow, “What if it had been you?”

And Joe will bite down hard on his lip, hard enough to bleed, holding the pain between his teeth as he says, “It wasn’t.”

And morning will come, just like it always does. 

***

The next year, they agree to separate for the first time since they met. 

It’s better than waking up to find Andy gone, for good. 

It’s better than how it was before. 

***

Sometime in the 1700s, Nicky and Joe forge passage onto an East India Company ship to free slaves, and when all of the merchants and sailors are dead, they leave at the next port with their weight in saltpetre and silk. Joe finds a tea shop in Guangzhou that still serves madak, and the owner brings out the beautifully carved bamboo pipe, and Nicky tries his hand at the language to show off, and Joe laughs until he cries when the owner misunderstands and the tea shop is forgone for a bagnio, the women curling small hands around Nicky’s reddened cheeks and chest. 

The opium is slow and smooth, the tobacco and herbs like fire on their tongues, down through to their lungs, and Joe touches the back of Nicky’s hand once the prostitutes have been sent away again, and Nicky’s eyes are wide and glassy and his mouth tastes wet and appealing, and everything is perfectly painless. They stumble back to the caravanserai and cover the bed in the stolen silk and undress each other until there’s nothing left. 

And, the smoke that weighs down their limbs, Joe’s breath cooling a sweat-slick spot on Nicky’s bare hip, Nicky’s fingers rough on Joe, the way that first Nicky comes and then Joe, Joe’s fingers in Nicky’s hair and Nicky’s teeth marks climbing up the column of Joe’s throat, the wine that they drink straight from the bottle dulling their senses, balancing their high, the way that they say they love each other without using any words, for one long moment as dawn begins to break over the horizon, they both forget what it feels like to die. 

***

When they find Sebastian, it’s a relief not to dream anymore. 

Napoleon has led his army to Russia for the liberation of Poland, leaving behind smoldering villages and decimated crops, and Joe and Nicky watch Andy talk to Sebastian through a screen of larch trees, persuading him to leave this frozen battlefield for another. They had crossed hundreds of miles to meet here, in Moscow, dressed in Napoleon colors to blend in, and somewhere along the way Nicky had stolen them both bayonets and Charlevilles, which they hold carefully now, their hearts in their throats. 

This is after Sebastian is hanged as a deserter, but before his family is gone, before he changes his name and leaves his past self behind. 

After the invasion, when the citizens had fled, when the city had been abandoned, the soldiers were left with liquor and little else, and the Grande Armée drinks and starves, and Sebastian has already died more times than he can count by now, the gaunt face and black hollows underneath his eyes, his boots and sword and musket pilfered from his hanging corpse. None of the soldiers will survive this Russian winter, and Andy looks at Sebastian’s bruised and bare feet and asks him if he thinks that this is his calling. 

He’s the first one they’ve seen since Quynh, the newest, but they don’t need to watch him closely to know when he first starts to believe. 

***

Years later, after the last of Booker’s sons have died, somewhere along the coast of France, Nicky feeds Joe grapes from the local vintner and promises him that he will never leave. This is after four or six or eight bottles, their tolerance to wine well-established by now, and after they have broken into the stone villa that used to be Booker’s home so that Booker could see where his children used to sleep when they were small. There’s a family that lives there now, but the three of them are light on their feet until they find the cool cellar, Joe placing juice-stained fingers to Nicky’s mouth and hushing him louder than anything. 

Booker had cried until there were no more tears, but now he indulges just as they do, a few paces away from them on the dirt floor, half of the wine ending up on his shirt instead of in his mouth, and he laughs, long and loud, but it’s not a happy sound. 

Nicky licks a wet stripe up the side of Joe’s cheek, tasting salt and dirt and something else, something uniquely Joe, and Joe bites down hard on Nicky’s shoulder, and – in the dark of the cellar, the quiet sounds of a sleeping family upstairs – their fingers pluck along the same soft spots as always, lighting each other up with precision, and Joe reaches beneath Nicky’s morning coat, inside his breeches, and feels skin hot enough to burn. 

The sound of Nicky’s hitched breath goes straight to Joe’s cock, just as it always does, and Joe moves his hand down further, quicker, wine and come slicking his fingers so that it’s easy to slide up and down, up and down, so that Nicky whispers low, rapid-fire Italian into the crook of Joe’s neck, into his shoulder, begging him not to stop. Joe smiles despite the low light, knows that Nicky can feel the curl of his mouth against the shell of his ear, knows it the same way that he can feel Nicky’s flushed face, his wet eyes, the same way that he feels more than hears Nicky let out a long, slow moan when he comes. Joe thinks that if he only lives one more day, this is what he would take with him to the darkness that awaits. 

Nicky’s mouth finds his again, and Joe’s hands are a fucking mess but he uses them anyway, clinging to Nicky’s waistcoat, his cheeks, and it’s a rough push and pull of tongues until Nicky unbuttons Joe’s own breeches, his deft fingers, and touches him while Joe gasps and shakes his entire body. Nicky pulls away and leans down, replacing his fingers with his lips, and Joe can just see the glint of light off the highlights in Nicky’s hair, and it’ll be morning soon, he knows, and they should be moving, they should be gone before the family finds there here like this, but Booker is clearly asleep according to the snores coming from the corner, and Joe’s knuckles are strained against the collar of Nicky’s shirt, his muscles aching for release, unable to let go. 

Nicky drinks the taste of him until he comes, leaning up again to kiss the taste away, and it’s minutes or hours, but suddenly Joe can hear the faint pad of bare feet on the floor upstairs, the small ritual sounds of lighting the hearth, of making the morning’s breakfast, and Joe buries his face into Nicky’s collarbone and promises, too, through the pleasant throb of his swollen lips, that they will never be apart. 

***

They ring in the dawn of the new century in the Americas, dying from typhoid fever. 

In their sick bed, Nicky’s forehead burning a hole in Joe’s chest, Nicky wakes from his delirium with a start and tells him that he’s suddenly forgotten the name of his childhood friend, his face slack and scared and deathly pale, and Joe chokes out this long, rattling cough, and says, lightly, “It happens to the best of us, my love,” his smile stained red with blood. 

Shortly thereafter, they enlist in the first world war and then the second, as tired of battle as they are of dying. In France again, Nicky barely speaks for fear of friendly fire, and Joe tries his hand at an American accent and succeeds, playing poker with the Yanks between raids, betting foreign currency and bars of chocolate, winning most of the time. They barely have time alone, even if they’re always together, stealing kisses in the dark of their foxholes while they watch the snow fall around them, waiting for that one lucky howitzer. 

After that, it’s Vietnam, and – marching through the swamps with their M-14s slung over their shoulders, losing their feet to jungle rot – Joe asks Nicky if he ever thinks about taking a vacation. Nicky looks away from his sodden boots and up at him, smiling wide and brilliantly, and it’s then that the sniper takes his shot, right between Nicky’s eyes. 

***

They rent a bungalow in Comino with a view of Santa Marija Bay, and Joe spends most of their money on food so that they never have to leave the bed, the wind rolling hot through the open balcony door, the sound of the water invading their dreams. They left Andy and Booker somewhere in Turkey, parting ways after Andy stole all of Nicky’s baklava and Booker stole all of Nicky’s money, each of them gliding into the crowd and never turning back, Nicky’s hand reaching for Joe’s. 

Joe maps out all of Nicky’s freckles with his mouth, even the one between his toes, and Nicky laughs long and low at that one, still ticklish after all of these years, and pulls him up so that their lips fit together, perfect puzzle pieces. Joe orders champagne and pastizzi and honey rings from a restaurant down the road, and Nicky eats directly from Joe’s plate using Joe’s own fork, smiling wickedly at him over his champagne flute, and afterwards Joe fucks him hard against the window, Nicky’s breath fogging the glass in plumes. 

Nicky takes him to see St. John’s Co-Cathedral and marvels at the frescoes and stained glass, and Joe takes him swimming in the Monte Cristo cave, their laughter echoing across the rock. It thunderstorms a few times, great black clouds swarming across the sky, and Nicky sits out on the uncovered balcony and watches the rain tremble on the surface of the water, and Joe yells at him from the bed that he’s bad luck and to get the fuck inside before he’s struck by lightning, and Nicky smiles back and says, “Why don’t you come out here, instead?” which is how they end up fucking on the tile, the rain coming down so fast it blinds them. 

Joe proposes twice in the span of a month, drunk both times, once on bended knee and the other with Nicky still inside of him, Nicky’s tongue in the spot where Joe’s shoulder meets the column of Joe’s throat, licking the sweat there, and Nicky whispers yes first in Arabic and then in Italian, kisses him once for every language that they know. They get married at sunset on Blue Lagoon Bay, the only ones around for miles, making promises to each other that they would never break, no witness, no rings, no God. 

The bay shines translucent, and Joe presses a kiss into Nicky’s hair and toasts a glass to another millennia, and Nicky laughs and calls him an incurable fucking romantic, and Joe vows to never change. 

***

Into the 21st century, Andy markets them as guns for hire, and it’s different now, more money, more weapons, easier to kill and be killed. Easier to fail. 

Booker finds Copley and Andy finds them and Morocco finds them all, tagine and couscous and pots of gunpowder tea. They barely have time to settle in before they’re on their way to Sudan and the trafficked girls, Joe looking at the abandoned shoes outside the hut and feeling that pit in the base of his stomach, that familiar pain cutting into him like broken glass. It’s only a few moments, but it feels like forever, the flash of the lights and then the burst of shells, the pain that rips through them again and again and again. 

And, of course, they die. 

Don’t they always?

***

In the lab, Nicky practices his Dutch in between tests, breathing out words to Joe, who flinches from the pain and corrects him through clenched teeth. It’s slow-going, the torture, the tests, and Joe dies eight times on the gurney before they move on to something else. He watches Nicky die five times, watches him open his eyes and remember, watches him turn his head to look over at Joe, letting out an exhale that he didn’t know he was holding when their eyes finally meet. 

The doctor uses her scalpel to cut into Joe’s skin, just above his heart, and he bites down hard on his tongue and says, with blood in his mouth, “Do you think you’re the first to think of this?”

And she smiles woodenly, never looking up from her work, and says, “No,” her breath licking at the fire of Joe’s chest, the scalpel moving as quickly as he heals, says, “but I will be the last.”

***

After the pub, after Booker, after Andy decides to stay and fight this time, for real, Nile finds Joe on the deck of their rented house, watching the sun rise. Autumn has just begun to give way to winter, the cold settling into the bones of all of them, and as they stand there, their breath cascades from their mouths and away. She yawns and instinctually apologizes, smiling at him through the haze of dawn. She lifts her coffee cup as she says, “I’m still on Marine time, what’s your excuse?”

The trees are slowly becoming visible, the sun lighting them up like fireworks, like flames, and Joe remembers a time when it was not this, when he was not this, when the world was smaller and he was younger, fighting Christians for the right to survive somewhere far away from here. “A thousand years ago, it was fajr,” he says, and watches the understanding pass her face. He swallows a mouthful of tea and the corner of his mouth lifts up impishly, “But now it’s because Nicky hogs the sheets.”

She’s surprised into a laugh, and all at once he’s glad that they’ve found her, glad that she has knitted them back together into what they used to be. It hasn’t been easy molding Andy into the acceptance of her mortality, hasn’t been easy willing her to fight again, to do the good that needs to be done in this world, but – with the exception of Booker, somewhere drowning his grief in alcohol – they have all been there to hold her up when she stumbles and falls. 

And Nicky will sometimes look at Joe, and Joe will look back, and it’s on the tip of his tongue to suggest retirement, to suggest running away from all of this and living out the rest of their destiny in solitude and warmth, in Malta or somewhere like it, sea and sand and the way that Nicky still kisses him good morning after a millennia, like it’s the first time, like it will be the last, Nicky’s nose fitting perfectly beside Joe’s, his lips and teeth and tongue, and Joe’s fingers scrabbling for purchase along Nicky’s shoulders, bruising, biting, hot enough to burn. But Nicky will shake his head, slowly, and Joe will know that they are not done here, that they will fight for this until the end has come calling for them like it has for Andy. 

They have a thousand more deaths in their future, a thousand more lives to live. 

And, as if she’s reading his mind, Nile asks, “Is it hard?” and then clarifies, “Hard to live this long?”

He shrugs, the cup in hands cold now, the dregs of his tea shifting and sliding to the tune of his body. “It’s infinitely harder to live than it is to die,” he tells her. “But I think that might be everyone’s burden, not just ours.” She watches his face, watches the emotions that pass over him as he looks over to the trees and then back to her again. “It’s hard to see family and friends leave you, it’s hard to watch the world move on, but we have each other to help us carry that weight. Andy had Lykon and Quynh for a very long time. Nicky has his God, you have yours.”

She hums, low in her throat. “And what do you have?”

He laughs. “Isn’t it obvious?” and she catches on, rolling her eyes. “I have Nicky.”

“Of course,” she says, and shakes her head, amused, the sun lighting up her dark skin. 

They lean against the deck railing in silence for a while, until they hear the softest of sounds start to emerge from inside, the shower starting in one of the bedrooms, the pad of bare feet on the floor, and then – from the kitchen – a kettle set to boil. They will be interrupted in a moment, Nicky bringing out a blanket for Joe and wrapping it around both of them, his sleep-wrinkled face burrowing into the crook of Joe’s neck, his arms sliding bodily and warm around him, his hushed good morning in a language both of them know. And then it will be Andy, back from a run around the neighborhood, sweat glistening on her bare arms, her side still itching and pulling her where she’s healing from what could have been a fatal gunshot wound. And then Nile will look at each of them in turn, and Joe will watch her face relax into the knowledge that this is who and what and why they are, that this is their family, for now and then and for forever, until eventually their destiny catches up. 

But, before all of that, right now, Nile pulls the blanket tighter around her shoulders, and watches him as he tells her that she doesn’t have to stay out here with him. And it’s a slow rise of her mouth, a smile that’s brilliant and wide as she winks and says, “But who will watch your back?”

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Fever of Light](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25597357) by [greedy_dancer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/greedy_dancer/pseuds/greedy_dancer)




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